LSU Rehabilitating Stroke Patients Through Adaptive Guitar

12/06/2018BATON ROUGE, La. – A group of LSU faculty and students from kinesiology and engineering
are creating and researching a music-based technique to help rehabilitate arm and
hand movement after a stroke. Their work is personal.

“The initial idea came about from personal experience. I knew someone who was a guitar
player before and they had a stroke and they had a thought of returning to the activity
they really enjoyed doing before this,” said Nikita Kuznetsov, an assistant professor
in the School of Kinesiology. “There were some devices on the market that were targeted
to that audience, but no one actually did any research on how people may use an adapted
guitar instrument to improve movement after stroke.

“We know from scientific literature that music has a very strong potential to improve
motor function and alter brain function in healthy people. Guitar is particularly
interesting because it requires coordination of two arms to produce a rhythm and change
chords. And I thought this would be a really nice area to go into: What happens to
your brain and muscle coordination when you learn how to perform this very complex
motor skill? Can we use music-based approaches to enhance clinical movement rehabilitation
outcomes in stroke survivors? I actually wanted to purchase some of the adapted guitar
devices that were on the market like Robotar, but they were not being sold anymore
for some reason. So, we had to make our own,” Kuznetsov said.

Kuznetsov shared that idea with Hunter Gilbert, an assistant professor of mechanical
and industrial engineering.

“We decided we needed to build our own prototype in order to facilitate this study.
So, I worked with a team of undergraduates who are all at the senior level, pretty
much in their last year of school in mechanical engineering and electrical engineering
and this team, under my advisement, produced the initial prototype,” Gilbert said.

Their team created a device that is attached to the neck of the guitar, as part of
their senior design project.

“It has servomotors on the inside, which can apply pressure to the strings of the
guitar to fret the strings in any chord shape that you want. This device is capable
of producing literally every chord that’s capable of being produced on a guitar,”
Gilbert said.

James Kirsch, an LSU senior majoring in electrical engineering and robotics was part
of the team that built the prototype. “Basically, we have programmed it so the user
can step on a pedal and that sends a signal to the computer that runs the device,
and depending on how you have it programmed to work it will send a signal to the servos
and they will, depending on which chord you wanted, press down onto the strings and
fret the chords,” Kirsch said.

Kuznetsov, along with undergraduate and graduate students majoring in kinesiology,
are conducting the first phase of their study.

“We are testing the guitar with healthy, young adults here at LSU, to characterize
motor learning skills and how people will actually interact with the device: we are
testing specific hypotheses about changes in their motor behavior and coordination.
We also want to make sure we fix all the bugs before trying it out with stroke survivors.
We need to make sure we can get accurate measurements of the timing of the strumming
pattern and the movements of the arm. The end goal is to apply it to individuals with
chronic stroke disease in a pilot study and then enlarge the pilot study depending
on the results. We are currently working on a grant submission to the National Institutes
of Health (NIH) as part of their “Sound Health” initiative to study how music could
be harnessed for health and wellness applications in daily life,” Kuznetsov said.

“I love it so far,” said Sarah Cherry, a freshman honors kinesiology major from Reno,
Nevada. “I have family members who have gone through stroke rehabilitation, and it’s
really cool to see that they’re trying to produce a kind of rehab that would be more
enjoyable, I think, for patients then what they have going on right now. I help Dr.
Kuznetsov run the project, bring in participants, set things up and everything like
that. It’s really cool getting exposure to research as a freshman, because I know
a lot of friends at other universities who haven’t been able to do that yet.”

“I like the music part of the project as well. I'm a musician, so I’ve always been
sensitive to that,” said kinesiology graduate student Marcelline Dechenaud. “I’ve
been working with the project’s research. I’ve been involved with some electronical
adjustment, to put everything together, and some coding. And some analysis of the
results as well.”

After this first phase, the guitar will be used and studied with patients at Baton
Rouge General hospital.

Mary Malloy, music therapist at Baton Rouge General said, “We are amazed at what he
has developed and excited to assist in his research. Guitar can be an especially challenging
instrument, as two hands work in coordination doing different things to make music.
Dr. Kuznetsov’s adaptive guitar will allow patients to learn and play guitar using
one foot and one hand, strengthening their motor skills while developing new brain
connections, improving emotional outlook and having fun.”

Arend Van Gemmert, acting associate dean for the College of Human Sciences and Education
said, “In this case, the participants are actually learning an instrument and playing,
so, that might help them with quality of life, because they are actually able to do
something, while they are doing this and maybe enjoying it. That means they are training
their fingers and hands and that is key for rehabilitation. When people have a stroke,
it’s very difficult to use their hands; some experience paresis,” said

If you or anyone you know are interested in participating in the study, please contact
Nikita Kuznetsov at nikita@lsu.edu.